


Sense

by patternofdefiance



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Developing Relationship, Dreams, F/F, Friendship, Nightmares, Senses, fem!lock, genderbent Sherlock (bbc)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patternofdefiance/pseuds/patternofdefiance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Lamnidae do not require sleep. Did you know? Of course you didn't."</p><p>Joan looked up from her medical journal and cup of earl grey. She blinked, thought out the sentence, and then the initial word. "You mean sharks?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sense

"Lamnidae do not require sleep. Did you know? Of course you didn't."

Joan looked up from her medical journal and cup of earl grey. She blinked, thought out the sentence, and then the initial word. "You mean sharks?"

"Mm." Sherlock didn't bother looking up from her laptop.

"Sherlock, everyone knows that. Kids in school know that. Kids in nappies, even. It's one of those cool things you learn early on, and you tell your parents, like it's some great gift of facts --" Joan stopped herself and smiled.

"Hmph."

"You probably deleted it," Joan suggested tentatively, wondering if this was pre-sulk Sherlock, or pre-overly-enthusiastic Sherlock. She was hoping for neither, was trying to divert the afternoon away from both of those courses, since she much preferred normal Sherlock: rubbish flatmate, brilliant thinker, slightly off friend. Joan considered, then asked another of her Sherlock-defusing questions: "Why do you mention it?"

"Oh." Sherlock sat up and actually looked at Joan. "Slept last night. Well, attempted to." She scrubbed her fingers through her curls. "I was less than successful."

Joan laid down her journal and set aside her tea. "Anything you're worried about? Anything you need to discuss?"

"Not with you, no." Sherlock types out something and closes the lid of her laptop - Joan's, actually, now she's paying attention.

"I am a doctor, you know." Joan lifts her cup and makes a face at the cool tea. "Tea for you?"

Sherlock tilts her head to the side -- that's a yes.

The kettle switched on, the cups and bags waiting, Joan leaned against the counter. "We could always go to the aquarium. I used to love visiting it as a kid."

"I have no wish to  _visit the aquarium_ ," Sherlock all but seethed. 

"...Alright then."

The kettle clicked, and Joan poured the cups, first Sherlock's because she liked her tea extra dark, and the few extra moments while Joan fetched and fixed her own cream and Sherlock's sugar was the perfect amount of extra steepage.

She smiled at the cups - hers a light blush of pale in tanin, Sherlock's a brooding swirl of sugar and bitter. Frowning, she handed the cup to Sherlock, who took it without comment, but sipped straight away. Her eyes closed momentarily, and she sighed.

“There’s dolphins, too,” Joan blurted suddenly, with a half grin. “They sleep with half of their brain switched on or something.”

Sherlock grunted, slurping tea. Imminent sulk warnings went off in Joan’s head.

“Oh, come on Sherlock, what’s wrong? So you’re a bit tired? Got up on the wrong side of bed?”

“What a ridiculous turn of phrase, I did no such thing.” Sherlock opened her mouth, winced, closed it. Slurped. Sighed. “I had a nightmare,” she finally said.

“Bad dreams? That’s it?”

“If I’d meant _bad dreams_  I would have said _bad dreams_ ,” Sherlock snarled. “Surely _you_ know the difference.”

Joan bit her lip, because yes she did. “Sorry.”

Sherlock shrugged, sipped her tea this time, and set it down. Then she lifted her feet onto the sofa and wrapped her arms around her knees.

Joan hesitated to ask what Sherlock had dreamed about, because Sherlock never asked Joan what her nightmares entailed. Granted, it was not a difficult leap to imagine what an invalided army doctor’s nightmares contained, but Joan had always found Sherlock’s lack of prying to be a quiet form of…well, respect.

An observation of boundaries. One of the few such rarities that Sherlock seemed to allow Joan.

“When you …dream,” Sherlock began, then looked away, then back at Joan’s frozen expression, “are all your senses engaged?”

Joan nodded carefully, willing the war to stay out of her face. Jemsey and Samuels and Arshad, and their indistinguishable reds.

“Colour?”

Joan nodded.

“Sound?”

Another nod.

“Taste? Touch? Smell?”

“Yes.” If her voice was hoarse, Sherlock took no note. Joan let her eyes flutter closed, anything to keep from seeing the piercing look in Sherlock’s eyes.

“Sometimes I lose a sense,” Sherlock said quietly. “It’s always been sound or sight before.” She held her hand out to inspect her fingers, as if to check she could still see them. “While I hold all my modes of data collection in high regard, by far sound and sight are most integral to my work. It’s logical, then, to assume my temporary loss of these is a dream-expression of fear. Deafness runs in the males of my family, and my mother was not the keenest pair of eyes near her end.”

Joan swallowed reflexively, her new tea forgotten. “Something was different last night, wasn’t it?” she asked softly. “Otherwise last night wouldn’t have upset you so.”

Sherlock glanced at her, and a half-smile grew on her face for a moment before disappearing again. “Quite right, Watson.” There was a bit of the smile left over in those words, and Joan felt her lips quirk at it.

“So which was it?”

Sherlock looked down at her tightly folded hands, the fingers interlaced. “Touch.”

When Joan lifted her gaze from Sherlock’s pale hands, Sherlock was staring intently at her. That mutable, changing silver was back in her eyes, some liquid property of uncertainty moving like tides. After a moment, without breaking the gaze, Sherlock said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s not like you could prescribe something for dreams.”

Joan smiled ruefully. “I’d have myself on it, if such a thing existed.”

“Dreams,” Sherlock said, then broke the stare-hold. Joan felt as if she could breathe again and wondered why. “What a _ludicrous_ method of defragmentation.”

Joan considered the conversation done, and quite possibly deleted from Sherlock’s brain at that, and set about drinking her (yet again) lukewarm tea. Whether Sherlock chose to remember opening up to Joan like this, the doctor credited herself with a very successful sulk-defusing.

All in all, not a bad afternoon’s work.

It wasn’t until the next evening, when Sherlock left Joan’s laptop unattended for a moment, and Joan accidentally happened upon the detective’s most recent tab – a purchase confirmation for two tickets to the aquarium – that Joan realized how very (delightfully) wrong she’d been.


End file.
